Celebrating the Joyful Arts at Ananda Village

“All art must be based on truth and on human nature.”
–Swami Kriyananda in his Saturday talk on the Arts

The Joyful Arts Festival, held every June (this year 15-17) here at Ananda Village celebrates the arts as a medium for inspiration and upliftment, not merely the display of good skills or clever ideas.

Friday night was held a beautiful musical concert (contact The Expanding Light for a recording) and Swami gave a talk on Saturday morning (see some excerpts below).

Here is a little slideshow from these 2 events. (you can watch it again by refreshing the webpage)

Saturday evening featured a play called “The Peace Treaty” written by Swami Kriyananda. In the Preface to the play, he writes:

“The Peace Treaty is a comedy in the classical sense of a play with a happy ending, and not in the more modern sense of a farce. Though much of it is, I hope, funny, the underlying theme is quite serious – as serious as mankind’s increasing longing, in this embattled Twentieth Century, for world peace.”

Here is a slideshow you can watch from this page (you can watch it again by refreshing the webpage)

Some excerpts from Swami’s talk on the arts:“We need to become artists as human beings”
“Art should be true, it should give hope”
“A good artist, a true artist, should be a philosopher”
“Bliss is what we are all looking for”

Others will comment on these pages about this past weekend. Coming back to back with Swami’s Birthday weekend it has moved the energy to a deeper level here at Ananda Village.